Sunday, March 29, 2015

I whistle: why not?
Have I not seen the first strips of green winding up the sloughs?
Have I not heard the meadow-lark?
I have looked into the soft blue skies and have been uplifted!

Where are the doubts and dark ideas I entertained?
What have I caught from the maple-buds that changes me?
Or was it the meadow-lark – or the blue sky – or the strips of green?
The green that winds up the sloughs?

I sought the dark and found much of it.
Is there in truth much darkness?
Have the meadow-larks lied to me?
Have the green grass and the blue sky testified falsely ?

I want to trust the sky and the grass!
I want to believe the songs I hear from the fence-posts!
Why should a maple-bud mislead me?

Saturday, March 28, 2015

Passionate March winds called in the wild, grey trees this morning.
The frozen brook
Has suddenly become a broad and turbulent stream,
Rushing through the deep ravine,
Swirling about the banks and bending bushes.
Winter is vanquished.
Yet in the harsh, raw air,
In the wet, clinging slime of mud and clay,
And lowering sky and bare, wind-tortured branches,
There lies no beauty or peace.
Peace that has brooded in austere purity
On the white snow-fields sleeping in amber sunshine;
Beauty in magical jade and diamond ice,
Or feathery, silvery powder of new-fallen snow.

But with the rushing of streams and winds there came
Stirring of unborn hopes. . . .
Passion, unrest, yearning, deep discontent,
Something that might become, all suddenly,
Joy. . . .
In an instant passing.
I have felt all day
This sense of questing youth throughout the world.

Before the day had passed,
Waiting in a crowded thoroughfare,
Two Chinamen appeared:
Immobile, passive, enigmatic beings,
Watching the ways of men with the Orient's weird gaze,
Lids dropping low over dim, slanting eyes.

One heavily muffled, seemed to be in pain,
That only his dark, claw-like hands revealed
In a slow writhing, half-hidden in his sleeves.
No other movement in mask-like face or form.
There for an instant I saw old China brooding,
Ancient old
Weighed with the burdens and pains of long, unfathomed, years.
And from those low-caste forms inscrutable,
My thoughts turned to sages, philosophers,
With essence of three religions mingled in their brains.
Calm ivory hands holding vast mystic keys

Weary I climbed the hill and now I sit beside my fire
While darkness gathers in,
Pondering a little while about the world,
The world that suddenly seemed old, dark, worn, this afternoon,
As men and women feel suddenly old sometimes
In an instant's passing.
Joy yields to sorrow.
Passion turns to pain.
But listen – soul of me!
Out in the strange March evening
Passionate winds are calling,
Even louder than they did in the grey morning.
The swollen stream rushes on.
O Youth of Springtime
Youth!
What passion, hope, freedom, in your untutored song:

The world is young, young, young tonight!
What will tomorrow bring?

~~Louise Morey Bowman (1882-1944)from Moonlight and Common Day, 1922

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

Sunday, March 22, 2015

Spring is come back, and the little voices are calling,
The birds are calling, the little green buds on the trees,
A song in the street, and an old and sleepy tune;
All the sounds of the spring are falling, falling,
Gentle as rain, on my heart, and I hear all these
As a sick man hears men talk from the heart of a swoon.

The clamours of spring are the same old delicate noises.
The earth renews its magical youth at a breath.
And the whole world whispers a well-known, secret thing;
And I hear, but the meaning has faded out of the voices;
Something has died in my heart: is it death or sleep?
I know not, but I have forgotten the meaning of spring.

~~Arthur Symons (1865-1945)from Poems, 1902

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

Saturday, March 14, 2015

Across my book your hand augustly reaches —
Thrusts it away.
I turn impatient to the window, watching
The tossed trees’ play,
March sunshine glinting on a chilly rain-pool
That snow-banks frame.
A lusty wind comes gusting on its errand
And names your name.

Captive, defeated, having striven I yield me
To thought awhile;
Letting the sunlight on the roughened waters
Bear me your smile;
Hearing the mischief-making wind that named you
Question afresh
If spirit find in spirit full contentment
Only through flesh.

Sunday, March 8, 2015

The heavy train through the dim country went rolling, rolling,
Interminably passing misty snow-covered plough-land ridges
That merged in the snowy sky; came turning meadows, fences,
Came gullies and passed, and ice-coloured streams under frozen bridges.

Across the travelling landscape evenly drooped and lifted
The telegraph wires, thick ropes of snow in the windless air;
They drooped and paused and lifted again to unseen summits,
Drawing the eyes and soothing them, often, to a drowsy stare.

Singly in the snow the ghosts of trees were softly pencilled,
Fainter and fainter, in distance fading, into nothingness gliding,
But sometimes a crowd of the intricate silver trees of fairyland
Passed, close and intensely clear, the phantom world hiding.

O untroubled these moving mantled miles of shadowless shadows,
And lovely the film of falling flakes, so wayward and slack;
But I thought of many a mother-bird screening her nestlings,
Sitting silent with wide bright eyes, snow on her back.

~~J.C. Squire (1884-1958)from Poems: Second series, 1922[Poem is in the public domain in Canada and the United States]

Saturday, March 7, 2015

Now I know that Spring will come again,
Perhaps to-morrow: however late I've patience
After this night following on such a day.

While still my temples ached from the cold burning
Of hail and wind, and still the primroses
Torn by the hail were covered up in it,
The sun filled earth and heaven with a great light
And a tenderness, almost warmth, where the hail dripped,
As if the mighty sun wept tears of joy.
But 'twas too late for warmth. The sunset piled
Mountains on mountains of snow and ice in the west:
Somewhere among their folds the wind was lost,
And yet 'twas cold, and though I knew that Spring
Would come again, I knew it had not come,
That it was lost too in those mountains chill.

What did the thrushes know? Rain, snow, sleet, hail,
Had kept them quiet as the primroses.
They had but an hour to sing. On boughs they sang,
On gates, on ground; they sang while they changed perches
And while they fought, if they remembered to fight:
So earnest were they to pack into that hour
Their unwilling hoard of song before the moon
Grew brighter than the clouds. Then 'twas no time
For singing merely. So they could keep off silence
And night, they cared not what they sang or screamed;
Whether 'twas hoarse or sweet or fierce or soft;
And to me all was sweet: they could do no wrong.
Something they knew – I also, while they sang
And after. Not till night had half its stars
And never a cloud, was I aware of silence
Stained with all that hour's songs, a silence
Saying that Spring returns, perhaps to-morrow.

~~Edward Thomas (1878-1917)from Last Poems, 1918
[Poem is in the public domain worldwide]

Sunday, March 1, 2015

Into a winter wood
At the crest of the morn I went;
The pine-tree stood like a tent
Of ermine, feathery soft;
The hemlock wore a hood;
And many another bole,
Towering far aloft.
Was wrapt in a samite stole.

A gentle whispering
Seemed wafted from tree to tree.
Like a broken melody
Chorded tender and low;
"We are gossiping of Spring,"
Said a birch, with a friendly nod,
"Of how we will joy when the snow
Will let us look on the sod!"

Then came a truant crow
With a lusty, rusty note,
And a squirrel, sleek of coat.
With his chirrup ever glad;
So we all chimed in, and oh,
What a cheery, chattering,
Frolicsome time we had
Just gossiping of Spring!

~~

Clinton Scollard (1860-1932)

from Easter Song: Lyrics and ballads of the joy of springtime, 1906

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]